YouTube's New Face-Blurring Tool: An Important Step for User Privacy and Safety

Last week YouTube announced the release of a new tool that will allow users to obscure people’s faces in the videos they have uploaded to the video-sharing platform.  By simply pushing a button in your settings to upload and post videos, you can now opt to protect the anonymity of individuals or crowds by blurring their faces from outside recognition.  YouTube has blogged about the new feature and how use it for those interested in the how to use the tool. 

The use of technology in the form of cell phones, video, social media and more have been such important tools for growing human rights work.  However, these advances come with associated safety costs. When individuals choose to post videos that expose and document protests, human rights abuses or interviews with advocates, they are often putting themselves at risk.  We have seen governments and non-state actors targeting human rights advocates who appear in videos that may challenge the powerful in a given society.  Monitoring video and other forms of technology has provided governments and others with data on protesters or human rights advocates giving them the capacity to arrest or target human rights defenders.  As a result, YouTube’s new tool has enormous potential to protect human rights defenders and citizen activists, while still allowing them to take advantage of the valuable opportunity to share important footage across the world.   

Through its Cameras Everywhere Report’s recommendations and its advocacy work, WITNESS has used its role as a leading human rights video advocacy to urge tech companies, including YouTube, to provide better policies and technologies to ensure privacy for those using their platforms.  The report highlighted the fact that no video-sharing platforms provided anonymity features to users.  Now after hard work by groups like WITNESS to achieve this shift and the leadership of groups like YouTube, this reality is beginning to change. This advocacy strategy presents an interesting approach to defending human rights defenders because the role of tech companies in impacting individuals’ rights to information and privacy continues to grow.  We believe these victories and partnerships are extremely important to the future of human rights activism and the safety of those advocating for human rights accountability. 

Some related articles sent to us by WITNESS are found in The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Mashable, Fast Company, Ars Technica, Global Voices Advocacy and The New York Times. And, here is WITNESS's blog post on the subject if you are interested in this tool and WITNESS’s complimentary work. 

Want Less Waste, or Not?

United State of Waste

We are surrounded by our waste - at least, our future waste. Even if we pride ourselves on recycling our soda cans or finishing the remains of our Chinese food to avoid throwing it out, we generate it in ever-increasing numbers. New York City residents produce about 12,000 tonnes of waste each day - that's the rough equivalent of 3000 elephants - and we recycle only about 17% of it. The United States as whole generates more than 50% of the world's solid waste. And the waste we produce keeps getting more toxic and less biodegradable.

So where does it go?

Once that garbage is sent down the chute, or finally stops smelling up the sidewalk on a hot July day, there are a limited number of places the waste can go. It can go to a landfill, where, if unregulated, the waste decomposes, produces methane, and can potentially leach toxic chemicals into the ground and into neighborhoods. 

The garbage can be sent to incinerators or "Waste 2 Energy" plants. While technology has vastly improved since the traditional 'just burn it' approach, it is impossible for the incinerators to fully capture all the smoke, ash, and chemicals released. 

Members of the Overbrook grantee network Gaia (the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) have made a movie called "Trashed" - viewable here - which highlights the potential dangers of these kinds of incinerators. In another, it highlights how oceans are now home to vast plastic particle soups; so contaminated that marine life is having trouble reproducing. 

So what can we do?

We've all heard a hundred ways to improve the situation: bring your own bag to the supermarket. Reuse glass containers. Buy vintage! While individual actions do go a long way, it is obvious that more must be done, and on a larger-scale. 

For example, to reduce the waste that we do produce, San Francisco has pioneered a "Zero Waste" campaign where almost nothing is sent to either landfills or incinerators. 

We also need increased transparency by businesses and awareness by consumers of the chemical compounds that coat most products - and the effects they can have on our bodies. 

And besides innovative re-imaginings for packaging - like this use of fungus, we also need to re-package the way industry is responsible for and deals with its waste - a challenge Overbrook grantee the Product Stewardship Institute is currently tacking. 

And knowing that one day soon: there will be nowhere to waste-away: it will come back home to us.